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According to the link arthur supplied above, George W. Bush claimed $84 of business income from his part ownership in a timber growing business on his 2001 Federal Tax Return. Because of this $84 in business income, he qualified as a small business.

uh, kerry could have explained it better, that’s what websites are for 😀 but he was responding to what bush was saying about how 900,000 small businesses would be affected by rolling back tax cuts for those earning over $200,000 which, as ken shultz points out, bush would have “qualifed as a small business,” so like the argument (that i missed 🙂 was that that 900,000 number was inflated!

I’m in an S Corp, and if I make less than $200,000 a year for too long, I’ll start working for someone else.

At the convention, Kerry promised to raise taxes on everyone who makes more than $200,000 a year; in the same breath, he promised to cut taxes for small businesses. It was at that very moment that I crossed him off of my list.

When I made the comment above, I was pointing out the answer to the question at the top of the thread, not making some kind of pro-Kerry point.

It looks like a Cheney all over again. The Kerry campmaign has Bush dead to rights on a factual issue, and it’s only going to be a big deal because Bush insisted on running with it to try to score a hit on Kerry – Just like they had Cheney dead to rights about meeting Edwards, which no one would have cared about if Cheney hadn’t tried to build a character attack around it.

Yeah, it’s inflated. It includes people with business income, like Dubya and Dick. There are about 72,000 businesses with actual employees affected (out of tens of millions of small businesses). What Bush also leaves out is that under Kerry’s plan, about 17 million people with business income would get tax cuts.

(Update, Oct 1: The Tax Policy Center refined its estimates after we posted this article and came up with a figure of 471,000 small employers who would see a tax increase under Kerry’s proposal, including an estimate of sub-S and partnership filers who have employees. Buy this estimate, the figure used in the Bush ad is nearly double the real number.)

Ken Shultz is correct

If you are a small business that has any number of employees (i.e. jobs) – you should have at least 200K on your tax return – you can easily have 200K on our tax return and no real income – especially if you are a manufacturer and have inventory (this gets counted as income) This type of business is EXACTLY the type of business that Kerry was complaining about leaving the US and his proposal will hurt them.

It is true that some small businesses that file as S corporations would see a tax increase. But it’s also true that that number is quite small compared to the total number of small businesses and, it’s an even smaller number of these affected S corporations that have employees, and a smaller number still that will be forced to cut jobs because of the increased taxes.

I do not think that this is an effective argument against the proposed tax increase.

(Oct 9; CORRECTION: What we originally reported as a “timber-growing” enterprise is actually described on Bush’s tax return as an “oil and gas production” concern, the Lone Star Trust. We were confused because The Lone Star Trust currently owns 50% of another company, “LSTF, LLC”, described on Bush?s 2003 financial disclosure forms as a limited-liability company organized “for the purpose of the production of trees for commercial sales.” So, Bush does own part interest in a tree-growing company, but the $84 came from an oil and gas company and we should have reported it as such.)

Keith, if my mother went to the mall topless while wearing men’s underwear, that would be an effective argument against the tax increase.

You guys also should refine your definitions of making money. Gross revenue is not the same as net income after expenses.

Using the term “make” confuses some people. For instance, when Ken tells me he must make 200,000.00 per year I assume that is profit rather than gross income before expenses, which may not be the case.